run up to the
nursery with some new toy or gaily-dressed doll that she had purchased
out of her scanty savings, for Aunt Madge had been a daily governess,
too. She could recall the Sunday afternoons when she sat in her lap
and the beautiful voice sang to her or told her stories,--Joseph and
his brethren and Daniel in the lions' den,--or on other days dear old
fairy stories such as children love. She had been her bridesmaid, too,
and had grown very fond of the honest, sturdy Scotchman whom his wife
so tenderly idealised.

"Uncle Fergus was a good, kind man," she thought, "but he was not all
that Aunt Madge imagined him. Most people would not have called him
interesting, but he was devoted to her. What a bright creature she was
until little Malcolm died. That was the first of her troubles. What a
happy home theirs had been, but it was Aunt Madge who had been the
heart of the house, who had organised and planned. Uncle Fergus had
never originated anything.

"And she loved him as dearly as I love Marcus," she went on. "And yet
when she lost him there was not a murmuring word.

"'I thought it was too good to last,' she once said to me, 'but my
widow's cruse will never be empty. I have the sweetest memories, and
by-and-by I shall have my treasures again. Do you know I often pray,
Livy, that I may not long so much to die? God's will, not mine, even
in this.'

"Oh, Aunt Madge, dear Aunt Madge, I cannot spare you yet," murmured
Olivia more than once that night, for it is hard for human affection to
rid itself of selfishness.

When Olivia brought Deb a cup of tea at seven o'clock, the good
creature seemed quite shocked. "To think I have slept all these
hours," she said, in a dazed voice.

"Miss Olive, why did you not wake me long ago? You are fit to drop,
and what will Dr. Luttrell say?" but Olivia shook her head with a faint
smile.

"I will lie down now and get a nap. Deb, I am sure she is no worse;
she has taken all Dr. Randolph ordered, and though she has not spoken,
she seemed to me a shade less exhausted;" but, though Deb would not
endorse this, Olivia felt certain that she was right.

She was sitting at her late breakfast, when Marcus called to see how
they had spent the night. And her account evidently relieved him. He
waited to hear Dr. Randolph's opinion. Olivia came back to him as soon
as possible.

"Oh, Marcus," she said, the tears rushing to her eyes, "Dr. Randolph
says that the exhaustio